CoinShares has launched a physically-backed bitcoin exchange-traded product (ETP) in response to the growing institutional investor demand for cryptocurrencies.
The CoinShares Physical Bitcoin ETP (BITC) is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange with a total expense ratio (TER) of 0.98%.
BITC has been seeded with over $100m assets under management (AUM) in order to meet the level required for institutions and corporates to consider investing.
Each unit of BITC is backed with 0.001 bitcoin at launch which is held by CoinShares and custodied by Komainu which is a joint venture between Nomura, Ledger and CoinShares.
Frank Spiteri (pictured), chief revenue officer at CoinShares, who joined from WisdomTree last April, commented: “Over the last 12 months, we have seen a steady increase in interest and demand for digital assets from our institutional clients.
“The physically-backed structure is familiar to institutions who have extensive experience in trading similar commodity-based investment vehicles.”
CoinShares is currently the largest crypto ETP provider in terms of AUM with $2.9bn across five strategies.
This includes the largest ETP on the European market, the Bitcoin Tracker EUR ETN (COINXBE), which has €1.2bn AUM.
